Barack Obama’s nationally televised speech in Havana, supposed to be the high point of the first trip by a US president to Cuba in 88 years, was overshadowed by the terrorist attacks in Brussels, part of the continuing fallout from over a decade of US imperialist interventions in the Middle East.
US television networks cut from the address without a word of commentary to cover the bloodshed in Belgium, while the American president’s Republican critics questioned why he was still in Cuba at all and not returning to Washington to direct the “war on terrorism.”
Obama followed up the speech with a hasty meeting with a collection of Cuban anti-government “dissidents” at the US Embassy. Most of them likely picked up their paychecks from the National Endowment for Democracy and the Agency for International Development on their way out.
And, finally, Obama and his family went to an exhibition baseball game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays.